Black is Back!: Retribution and the Urban Terrain: 1990s

Robin R. Means Coleman

Intro

• 90s represented America’s love affair with horror - “prestige horror”
• Star power and big budgets
• Silence of the Lambs, Interview with a Vampire, Dracula, Wolf, Frankenstein, The Mummy, The Sixth Sense, The Blair Witch Project, etc.
• Black participation in these films is noticeably limited
• What does horror mean for Blacks in the 90s?
• “Black Horror” is back with a vengeance
• Not seen since 70s Blaxploitation
• Def By Temptation, Tales From the Hood, The Embalmer, etc.

“Black Horror” & “Blacks in Horror”

• Few prestige films in “Black Horror”
• Beloved is an exception from Oprah Winfrey…
• Very little financing
• Exploding home video market
• Blacks in substantive roles
• “Blacks in Horror” films are abundant
• Candyman: played on old stereotypes by again placing a blond beauty in peril at the hands of a Black boogeyman
• Black superhero
• Blade and Spawn - driven to revenge after White villains destroy their lives

The Urban

• One recurring theme in these films is that black, inner-city, urban environments are deadly real estate
• Dangerous and troubled, but worth fighting for and cleaning up in “Black Horror”
• By contrast, “Blacks in Horror” films saw no redemptive qualities. The urban is bloodthirsty!
• Similar to depictions of Africa in 20s-30s films as being primitive and bloodthirsty as well

Def By Temptation (Bond III, 1990)

• Similar to The Blood of Jesus (Williams, 1941)
• Distributed by Troma Entertainment
• Low budget, but high imagination!
• James Bond III wrote, produced, directed, and starred in the film
• Ernest K. Dickerson as DP
• Lots of work with Spike Lee
• Southern sensibilities of decency
• Conservative view of sex
• Similar to Abby

Def By Temptation Cont...

• “Mother-as-devouring-and-poisonous figure” is anomalous in “Black horror”
• Black women generally revered
• Unlike many others…
• Temptation asserts that “the only answer to urban strife and decadence is Jesus”
• There’s also an undercurrent of STDs
• Definitely playing on the AIDS crisis of the 80s and 90s...

Black Culture and Aesthetics

• White horror fled to the suburbs, so “Black Horror” took advantage of the urban gap
• These narratives were black-centered, drawing on Black folklore, histories, and culture
• “The aesthetic was Black, with expressions of style, music, language, and overall cadence - culturally specific references and insider talk - speaking to Blackness, as well” (9)

“The films brought a social realism, revealing that what was most threatening to urban Blacks, the stuff that haunted them while awake and in their dreams, was lingering racism, socioeconomic disparities, health crises, and specific forms of criminality, such as gun and gang violence, rogue cops” (9)

Inner-City

• Blacks and the “desolate, ghetto core of the city”
• Inner-city tied to “a racialized and lower socioeconomic image, with Blacks being shown as poor or participating in illegal, underground economies such as drug sales” (9)
• “Only the violent, dangerous, and depraved thrived in the inner-city, while the innocent, those who could not get out, were held hostage” (9)

The ‘Hood

• The ghetto (70s) = the ‘hood (90s)
• Describes and delineates locality
• Local home environment
• Place that pertains to identity construction and understandings of community
• A place where Blacks are “real,” authentically Black
• “Sell-out Blacks” turn their backs on the ‘hood...
• Hip-Hop generation can be thanked for reminding everyone of where they came from

‘Hood Culture

• ‘Hood’s problems at least partially caused by the media, the police, and other apparatuses of the state
• Guns and drugs delivered into Black communities
• Poverty as a result of misguided economic policies
• “These films caution that though Black communities are victimized by these phenomena, Blacks do not have to succumb” (12)
• Black youth most susceptible to dangers of the ‘hood
• Gangsta rap culture (NWA, et al)

Notable Films...

• The Serpent and the Rainbow (Craven, 1988)
• Predator 2 (Hopkins, 1990)
• The People Under the Stairs (Craven, 1991)
• Vampire in Brooklyn (Craven, 1995)
• Tales From the Crypt: Demon Knight (Dickerson, 1995)
• Tales from the Hood (Young, 1995)
• The Embalmer (Berry, 1996)
• Bugged (Armstrong, 1997)
• Spirit Lost (Barnette, 1997)
• Spawn (Dippe, 1997)
• Beloved (Demme, 1998)
• Blade (Norrington, 1998)

Horror, History, and Memory

• History of Black man/monster and White female/victim dynamics in horror
• White womanhood is prized
• Ellen Scott’s essay, The Horrors of Remembrance, “observes that the film recovers a narrative of emotional, physical, and political pain that is effectively erased in most other popular treatments of slavery” (20-21)

Candyman (Rose, 1992)

• Continues to exploit fears of the inner-city
• Fearsome housing project home to gang violence, filth, and a most violent monster
• Daniel “Candyman” Robitaille is the son of a former slave
• Sophisticated, elegant, educated, and cultured…
• Died on what will become Cabrini-Green housing project
• The story rises to mythic proportions
• Helen and Bernadette “safari” their way to Cabrini-Green
• “The two women are Whitened through class positioning and education level by Anne-Marie, who views such status as the root of Black exploitation” (26)

Candyman Cont...

• The film addresses the kinds of racisms Blacks experience head on
• Robitaille was lynched due to racism
• Police rush to Helen’s aid because she’s White
• Helen lives in a building that is Cabrini’s twin
• Highway made to separate poor and wealthy sides of town
• Gentrification…
• It’s all viewed through a lens of Whiteness
• Candyman doesn’t kill Helen. Rather, he punishes Blacks...

Candyman Cont...

• Candyman is to be viewed as a tragic, wounded monster - like Frankenstein’s monster
• Created by folks far more terrible than he is
• “However, the film strays from the monster-with-a-heart-of-gold theme by playing on fears of the big Black boogeyman coming in and taking away a White woman” (27)
• Exploits the same old stereotypes…
• “Indeed, when Candyman and Helen (who is only partially conscious) finally have a consummating kiss, the moment of miscegenation is punished as ‘bees stream from his mouth. Thus … horror operates here to undermine the acceptability of interracial romance’” (27)

Candyman Cont...

• In the end, the movie celebrates White womanhood
• White savior trope
• The Black community knows she didn’t commit the murders she was accused of
• She saved baby Anthony
• Candyman disappears in the end, along with the history of racism he brings
• It’s all about Helen as she becomes monstrous
• She’s a woman scorned and can go where Candyman could not